Melo Costa Yekima has refused requests to sing from both government and opposition in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Photograph: Jason Burke for the Guardian

A hot, humid afternoon in Kinshasa. Traffic snarls and grinds on rutted streets. Heavy rain threatens. And Felix Wazekwa’s band load their bus with musical instruments in the suburb of Limete before heading to a tough neighbourhood far across the city. A local candidate in the elections rescheduled for Sunday has hired them to play at a rally.

“If you can get people to dance then you can get a message across very easily. The politicians have a message, and I am the very good at getting people to dance. So they come to me,” said Wazekwa, who is one of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s biggest stars.

The imminent election is two years late and has been forced on President Joseph Kabila, in power since 2001, by popular and international pressure. The stakes are high. The victor will command the DRC’s security establishment – and the lion’s shares of the revenues generated by the country’s vast mineral resources. The losers are likely to face years of repression.

In the DRC, music and politics are inseparable. To gain an advantage, many politicians turn to the country’s singers and band leaders, hiring them for rallies, commissioning special compositions, or simply paying for a mention during a song.

“During the campaign I sing what I’m told to sing … I’m not here to judge,” said Wazekwa, who recorded a recent single praising the government’s presidential candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, based on a text prepared by aides.

With no revenue from royalties, systematic pirating, limited infrastructure and few public performances, many Congolese musicians have always relied on wealthy patrons.

Campaign messages blare from a car as smoke rises from a fire at the electoral commission in Kinshasa on 13 December. Photograph: John Wessels/AFP/Getty Images

“The artists need money and politicians, especially those who have been in power for some time, want to burnish their image. This is a cheap way of getting publicity. You pay to be mentioned in one song, and it gets replayed many, many times,” said Israel Mutala, a Kinshasa-based analyst and columnist.

The DRC is a creative powerhouse despite its deep poverty and endemic instability – and its eventful political history has one of Africa’s richest soundtracks.

In 1960, the song Independence Cha Cha, celebrating the end of Belgian colonial rule, was a continent-wide hit. During his disastrous three-decade rule, President Mobutu Sese Seko commissioned “praise songs” from top artists.

In recent years, a more contemporary and gritty style has emerged to challenge the famous “Rumba Lingala”, the DRC’s 70-year-old, Cuban-influenced, popular musical tradition.

Not all see the tight ties between creative artists and politicians as healthy.

“If there’s a relationship between music and politics, then it’s a very perverted one … When there are so many dead, raped, sick, miserable in this country then we musicians have a responsibility too … These are our fans, our brothers and sisters,” said Alex Dende Esakanu, AKA Lexxus Legal, one of the DRC’s most popular rappers.

“Of course musicians have the right to take the politicians’ money, but I say it’s immoral.”

Esakanu, 39, is now an opposition candidate and spokesman for the campaign of Martin Fayulu, a former businessman who was a marginal figure before the campaign but has been attracting large crowds.

“The authorities are doing everything than can to block us. If the elections are fair, we have every chance of winning,” said Eskanu, speaking to the Guardian at his home in a poor neighbourhood of central Kinshasa which, like most of the city, suffers from a chronic lack of electricity and drinking water.

“People have a very deep, strong desire to express themselves at the polls. They think that by voting they will have a better life. There is deep disillusion with the government and they want to punish those who have been in power,” said Mutala.

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Many blame Kabila, who took power at 29 after his father, Laurent, was assassinated in 2001, for the problems. But Kabila’s reluctant decision to step down, two years after his second electoral mandate expired, has defused some tension.

Most observers believe Shadary will win, and many fear fraud to make sure the government’s choice is the victor. People have been shot at by police during rallies and protests.

On Wednesday , the electoral commission announced it was cancelling voting in the cities of Beni and Butembo and their surrounding areas because of Ebola and militia violence. The areas are opposition stronghold, and local politicians denounced the move as an effort to swing the vote in Shadary’s favour.

Joseph Kabila sits in a garden at his personal ranch in Kinshasa earlier this month. Photograph: John Wessels/AFP/Getty Images

The two biggest opposition political figures have been barred from the contest on legal grounds so votes against the government will be split between Fayulu and Félix Tshisekedi, the only other candidate.

“They’ve been very tactical, very clever. They’ve got the opposition exactly where they want them,” one diplomat in Kinshasa said of the government.

Kabila told reporters this month he would not leave politics and planned to stand for election in 2023.

Wazekwa defended his work for Shadary, who is under EU sanctions for his role in a crackdown on pro-democracy protestors last year.

“If I say no to him, and not to others, then I’m making a political statement. But now because I’ve played for one candidate, I’m being labelled as on his side … This just isn’t fair. In France [the late] Johnny Hallyday was for [the former president Nicolas] Sarkozy. In the US, Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump had artists who supported them. So why is it a problem when it’s in Africa?” he said.

A still from a Felix Wazekwa music video. Photograph: Felix Wazekwa TV/YouTube

Other musicians pointed out that refusing a request from the government brings significant risks: tax investigations, cancelled licenses to perform and worse. A rapper who criticised the “vultures in velvet” in power was abducted by unknown men in the eastern city of Bukavu this month.

Melo Costa Yekima, one of the leading figures in a new wave of younger musicians mixing dance with rap, said he had refused demands to record from both government and opposition.

“You can’t separate music from politics ... I just try to ring an alarm bell and tell things as they are in our society,” said Yekima. “The elections are a good thing but I don’t think they will bring the changes that people want. But I am optimistic. I believe that things will sort themselves out here one day and Congo is going to be beautiful.”